CFP: THE CAT IN THE HAT AT 50: BEGINNER BOOKS COME OF AGE (Modern Language Assn)
Session at the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting in
Chicago, December 27-30, 2007.
Sponsored by the MLA’s Children's Literature Division.
Deadline: March 1, 2007
The Cat in the Hat (1957) turns 50 in 2007. Seuss wrote the book in response to the "Why Johnny Can’t Read" crisis of the 1950s: within two years of its publication, The Cat was already being hailed as “the most influential first-grade reader since McGuffey.” The book inaugurated Random House’s Beginner Books series, which included Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham (1960), P.D. Eastman’s Go, Dog. Go! (1961), and Stan and Jan Berenstain’s The Big Honey Hunt (1962) — the first in their long-running Berenstain Bears series. More importantly, the success of The Cat enabled Seuss to write for children full-time. (Though The Cat was Seuss’s twelfth children’s book, his primary source of income was advertising.)
Over the past 50 years, the Cat has starred in two animated cartoons, one feature film, a Broadway musical, and Robert Coover’s satirical novella “The Cat in the Hat for President” (1968). He has appeared in political cartoons and on two U.S. postage stamps, has
marched in parades, and serves as the mascot for the National Education Association’s Read Across America Day. The Cat has sold over seven million copies in English, and has been published in over a dozen other languages. Along with the Grinch, the Cat is the
character most closely associated with Dr. Seuss.
This panel invites submissions related to any aspect of The Cat in the Hat and its legacy. Topics may include but are not limited to: influence, adaptations, translations, reception, historical and
cultural contexts, childhood, education, reading primers (including other Beginner Books), and Seuss as editor (he served as President of Beginner Books, and until the early 1970s remained actively involved as an editor).
By 1 March 2007, please send a one-page abstract to: Philip Nel, English Department, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506-6501 (philnel@ksu.edu). Panelists will need to be members of the MLA by 1 April 2007.
